I just got done reading Mark Gibb’s Backspin piece on the iPad, and I have to agree with him on a number of counts. Well, except one. Is Apple a monopoly in waiting? Is Apple on the fringes of Federal destruction because its violating Anti Trust laws? Are the wolves lingering in the trees waiting for the right moment to unleash their judicial fury?

No.

I’m not saying that Apple should be allowed to continue its current, as Mark puts it, “walled garden strategy”. No company should be allowed to control that much of any market (ahem… Microsoft!) while at the same time controlling the reins of the entirety of said market. I submit, however, that Apple is not stupid and there are reasons to believe this.

1. Apple has been slowly and methodically winning back market share from Microsoft and has made itself an extraordinarily powerful entity with some very cunning market and product moves. Apple’s core (no pun intended) business has always been computers, but their bread and butter is the iPod. They know that. They also have no intention of blowing this position with a ridiculous claim of Anti Trust.
2. Apple won the record industry by hobbling music with DRM. Now that’s mostly gone, so you can put your iTunes music on any player that supports AAC, and most of them do. It may not be as seamless to sync a non-iPod, but its not that hard, and would be a very hard position to try and win with that in court.
3. Apple only controls a very small portion of the desktop and laptop market, despite being the top retailer for such systems now quarter after quarter. Apple’s very sharp lawyers need only indicate Microsoft’s marketshare and previous Anti Trust issues compared to their own marketshare to indicate how ludicrous the concept is that they are a monopoly.
4. Apple does use and contributes greatly to open source projects, most notably Darwin which lies at the core of its own OS, Mac OS X, and supports a number of open source initiatives. Most recently with the arrival of the iPad it has stated that the device specifically supports the ePub standard, which you can read about at WikiPedia.

Again, Apple is not stupid. They have, in my estimation, cleverly positioned themselves to be in that unique place where they are wanted and deemed needed, but aren’t required. That, I believe as I am not a lawyer and simply don’t know, is likely the difference between being an industry giant and being “invited” to Anti Trust depositions.

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